The Zenith Suite & broker

Each Zenith app works on its own. Together they form the Zenith Suite — a family of apps that recognise each other on your phone and pass things back and forth. This page covers what the family shares, how the sharing works, and what each app keeps to itself.

#The family

The suite's apps are Zenith Launcher, Zenith Icon Pack, Zenith Calendar, Zenith Mind, Zenith Tasks, Zenith AI and Zenith Tulpa. This guide covers Zenith Launcher, Zenith Icon Pack and Zenith Calendar. More apps will join it over time.

#How the apps find each other

Android keeps apps from freely seeing what else is installed. Zenith apps opt in: each one names its siblings so it can spot them and hand things over. Every Zenith app also answers one shared "open" action, so any sibling can open any other through the same door.

Only apps signed by the same developer key count as siblings. A signature-level permission that only co-signed Zenith apps can hold guards everything they share, so a look-alike app can't slip into the family.

#The broker — the shared shelf

Suite apps share through the broker — a private, signed shelf on your phone that co-signed Zenith apps can read and write. It has no screen, and you never open it. When this guide says something is "shared across the suite", this shelf is how.

One installed app hosts the shelf for the others. The host is picked in this order: Zenith Launcher, then Zenith Mind, then Zenith Tasks, then Zenith Calendar. So the calendar hosts only when none of the others is installed. An app that is alone keeps everything itself.

No server is involved. Everything on the shelf stays on your phone.

#What rides on it

• AI keys, stored encrypted, so a key you add in one Zenith app works in the others. See Shared keys & connected accounts.
• Suite settings, such as the suite-wide AI switch, the active being (who answers when you ask the sky) and the one sound switch. See Ask the Sky across the suite and Sound across the suite.
• The Shuttle — the suite's shared tray for passing text and files between Zenith apps — with its text and files. See The Shuttle.
• Lenses, suite memory and the being's voice.
• Connected Google accounts, so you link an account once for every Zenith app.

#What stays with each app

Sharing has limits, on purpose. Each app keeps its own:

• Gold. Every Zenith app sells its own Gold, and one app's Gold never unlocks another's. A shared key never carries Gold either. See Zenith Gold across the suite.
• Settings and content. Your launcher's skies stay in the launcher, and your calendar's almanacs stay in the calendar.
• Notification switches. They are kept in each app.

#Links between apps

A Zenith app never writes another app's data. Instead it does one of three things:

• It opens a link to one thing in a sibling, such as a single commitment in Zenith Calendar.
• It hands something over and asks the sibling to make something from it. For example, Zenith Tasks can hand a task to the calendar, which opens a new commitment already filled in.
• It asks for a link back, so both sides remember they are tied together.

#Notifications, the suite way

Every Zenith app posts its notifications the same way. There is one channel per kind of notification, and each channel has its own switch in that app. They all share one look, and tapping one opens the thing itself. A kind you switch off is never delivered; it isn't just silenced. These switches are not shared, so each app keeps its own.

#Applies to these Zenith apps

• Zenith Launcher hosts the broker whenever it's installed, and holds the keys and the Shuttle for the others. Its side: reaching out and reaching in.
• Zenith Calendar meets Tasks, Mind, Zenith AI and the Launcher in set places, and hosts the broker only when none of the higher apps is installed. Its side: The calendar in the Zenith Suite.
• Zenith Icon Pack doesn't ride the broker at all. It's a set of icons that any launcher can read. Its side: The Icon Pack in the Zenith Suite.

See also. The Shuttle · Shared keys & connected accounts · Zenith Gold across the suite · Privacy across the suite